


Medellin

by Perrault



Category: Sicario (2015)
Genre: Warnings for violence I guess?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-04-28 00:00:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5070004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perrault/pseuds/Perrault
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In progress.</p><p>Kate finds Medellin, the man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a whore for comments. Leave me comments. Tell me I'm pretty.

20 miles outside Medellin, Colombia

Kate can feel the sweat on the back of her neck, beading up and rolling down beneath neckline of her shirt. She's all in black, and her hair has been slicked back and secured in a braid. She's regulating her breathing. _1-2-3-4, Reeeeelaaaaax._

She stares at the rafters above her head. She's been in the attic for over 12 hours, sucking down water, sleeping when she can, trying not to let the spiders bite her, waiting for the man downstairs to go to his workshop in the backyard.

There's a bucket nearby. When she's needed to piss, she's fitted an empty water bottle between her legs, then poured the contents as quietly as she can into the bucket. It's not perfect, and it stinks, but one does what one can.

It's starting to get dark out, she can see the sky through a small gap of the eave of the house. She hears a click downstairs. A light coming on. She can never hear the man walk. The shuffling, plodding gait she's observed two years ago, it must have been an act. Maybe it's something in the air here, but he's lean and catlike, pacing like a jaguar across the marketplace cobblestones, his wet, blood red tongue tasting the air whenever he opens his mouth to speak.

She hears a door downstairs open, and crawls to press her face to the gap in the eave. She watches Alejandro walk to a disconnected garage, and after a brief glance over his shoulder, shut the door carefully behind him.

Kate sighs. She keeps her eye trained on the door. She waits. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Satisfied that he was not going to leave, she scrambles over to the attic door. She pulls it gently open, and drops easily into the hallway below.

She considers a moment, then walks into the hallway bathroom, and keeping her weapon trained on the open doorway, takes a piss in the toilet of the man she's followed for the past eighteen months. She doesn't flush, and she doesn't wash her hands, just jerks up her fly and rebuttons her pants before padding lightly down the stairs.

She crosses the yard, the grass so green she wonders if there are bodies planted here, her weapon drawn. She reaches the door, which she sees isn't closed but instead left slightly ajar.

"Come in, Kate." His voice calls.

She hesitates for only a fraction of a second, before shouldering the door open and stepping, crossways, into the room.

Alejandro's back is to her. He's sitting at a table, cans of house paint on the floor around him, heaps of plastic sheeting. His hands are busy with a small wood and paper model. Kate almost laughs out loud when she sees that it's the U.S. Capitol Building.

"Are you here to kill me?" And his voice is infuriatingly calm, with a slight, sing-song lilt at the end of the sentence.

"Maybe," she whispers, and curses the tremor in her hand.

He turns and looks at her, his dark eyes serious and somewhat chiding. She instinctively lowers her gun. _Never point a gun at me again._

"There are some questions that only have two possible answers, 'yes' and 'no.' That was one of them," he drags his gaze over her. "Your answer leads me to believe that what you really meant to say was no."

He turns back to the model. "Sit down, Kate."

She takes a seat behind his right elbow, his gun hand.

"No," He says. "Over here, across from me, where I can see you." A pause. "Holster your weapon."

She stands up, and crosses to the other side of the table, her eyes locked on his bent head. Her gun stays out.

"You're always looking in the wrong places, Kate. You can't see what's going on in here." Alejandro sits up, tapping his temple with the first two fingers of his left hand. Kate watches him reach under the table, and the nose of her gun leaps up, but she's too late to stop the bullet ripping through her leg.

She collapses into the chair behind her, and the gun slips out of her nerveless fingers. It misfires as it hits the ground, and Kate hears the tortured _ping_ and _gush_ of a punctured can of house paint.

Alejandro walks around the table, picking up Kate's weapon from off the floor. He takes out the clip, and empties it leaving a single round in the chamber. He drops the remaining bullets, and Kate hears them skip across the floor, the bright high notes of brass on concrete scraping against her ringing eardrums.

She tries to stand up, but a vicious kick to her wounded leg sends her into a harsh scream of agony. As she sucks desperate pockets of air through her teeth -- _RELAXRELAXRELAXRELAX R-E-L-A-X, R-E-L-A-X_ \-- she watches Alejandro pick up a plastic bag.

"No," she mutters, as he walks over to her, shaking the bag open, his eyes sorrowful.

She scrambles out of the chair, reaching for the gun, but Alejandro is already on her. He grabs her by the hair, dragging her to the floor where he uses his superior weight to pin her in place, on her stomach, between his legs.

She's screaming. She's shaking her head back and forth, scraping her cheek against the floor. There are tears in her eyes as she feels the bag slip over her head. The world becomes a mass of shadows, the white plastic diaphanous enough to allow for light, but too opaque for her to make out more than shapes. Moisture from her breath condensates on the inside of the bag, and it wets her face, colder than her tears. She desperately tries to calm her breathing but it's no use. Her vision is going black.

She feels her muscles begin to jerk and spasm involuntarily in a last desperate bid for freedom. She feels Alejandro's weight, becoming somehow heavier. She feels his fingers at her neck, so warm, and weirdly comforting. Over the roaring in her ears, she hears what sounds like a soothing shushing sound, and her name, over and over again.

Then everything goes black.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrote. Posted. You know the drill. Leave the comments on the dresser.

When she wakes, she doesn't remember who or where she is. Her head is pounding. She catalogs her aches and pains, the swollen state of her tongue, the gag in her mouth, the rope on her arms. And soon enough her name returns, her goals, and the events of the-God-knows-how-long-ago it was now. 

Bright sunlight streams through the gaps in the walls and roof of what must be a workshed. Everything looks and feels rough, unfinished. Splinters prick at the back of her neck, and the rope binding her wrists chafes her skin. Even the gag, wet with saliva, feels like sandpaper against the spongy walls of her mouth. She's lying in the fetal position on a military issue cot, no pillow, no blanket, presumably so she could not suffocate herself. 

She groans. And then again, louder. 

The door opens with a jerk, and she grunts in pain as the light hits her eyes without barrier. A pair of hands, not so rough, softer, jerk her into a sitting position. Her chin is grabbed between a forefinger and thumb and wrenched up so their owner can listen look into her eyes. She squints. It's a man. Early forties. Not him. She huffs in disappointment, then kicks at him fiercely, catching him in the side of his left knee. He slaps her almost casually, in the idle sort of way one rebukes an animal for leaping onto a stranger without invitation. 

"Juan, diga el jefe que ella está despierta."

There's a scuffling sound outside as someone runs off. 

Kate groans again, trying to form articulate sounds behind her gag. The man pulls the cloth gingerly out of her mouth, making a show of wiping his hand on his pant leg after depositing the spit soaked was onto the cot. 

Kate's voice is hoarse from disuse. 

"Quién es su jefe?" She croaks. 

The man laughs. "No me jodas, putita. Tu conoces su cara."

He turns and fresh steam of sunlight hits her eyes from over his shoulder. She winces and swears, tucking her chin into her chest and screwing her eyes shut. 

"Here," she feels the man's fingers tap her cheek. "Here, give me your face."

She tilts her chin upward, her eyes still closed and feels him slip what must be a pair of sunglasses over her eyes. She opens her eyes cautiously, and finds the world transformed into muted sepia. She sighs in relief. 

"Thank you. Muchas gracias."

The man snorts. "Now she has manners."

There is the sound of footsteps crunching over gravel outside, and as she peers around the man standing in front of her, a familiar shape fills the doorway. 

"Hijo de puta," she breathes. The man sucks in a breath and raises a hand to strike her but Alejandro's voice lashes out like a viper, freezing him where he stands. He drops his hand and ducks out the door, squeezing past Alejandro as though he dare not touch him. 

Alejandro steps into the shed, bending his head so as not to hit it on the frame. He seems to fill the space, his posture slouched but his watchful menace billowing out around him like a villain's cape in a melodrama. He prowls over to her, the same jungle cat she'd stalked in Medellín. 

"I'm glad to see you're awake."

"You put a bag over my head. You shot me."

"You hid in my attic. You followed me across six countries. I'm calling it self defense."

Kate licks her lips. She notices how Alejandro's eyes follow her tongue. "Why not kill me?"

"What makes you think I didn't try?"

Kate shakes her head. She can feel that her hair is still in the same braid. "You don't try to kill someone and fail only to hide them in your shed."

Alejandro shrugs. "True enough." He pauses. "Why follow me, Kate?"

When she says nothing: "You quit your job."

This makes her snap. "I was fired," she spits at him. 

He nods. "This was good though. You could have followed my advice, moved--"

"Oh don't give me that horse shit again, you pathetic fuck." Kate glares at him. 

"I know what you are, Gillick. You're not an altruist, but you're not a fucking wolf, you don't have the fucking dignity. You're a goddamn dingo, or a rat, or a tomcat. You're not a predator, you're a thief, a scavenger, a death monger. You slipped into Medellin's corpse like a ghost through a greased lock and now you're her puppeteer. You've got her doing pirouettes through Central America, absorbing local operations, slaughtering jefes and their families like you're God and they're an anthill. You sack of shit, did you even ever really lose anyone the way Graver said you did?"

He's on her in an instant, his large hand wrapping around her neck. 

"Never presume to know what I have lost, gringa bitch," he seethes, shaking her. "Don't you dare."

She chokes out a laugh, mocking him. "You're fat, and old, and slow. How long before the young bloods catch up to you? How long before you don't turn around quick enough? How long before you reach for your gun and find it empty? Not long at all. And when that comes, I or someone like me, will be waiting in the shadows."

Alejandro's hand flexes and for an instant Kate's vision fails, before he lets go of her and retreats. 

"Where'd you learn to talk like that? Washington?" Alejandro's eyes glitter with rage. "I'm not the only scavenger here. Your nation, your collection of imperialists, baby-killers, coke heads, and murderers, they're just as much a villain as I am. Worse, they put me here. American guns, American addicts, dragged me here and shoved a pistola into my hand."

He squats in front of her, staring into her eyes. "You keep throwing shit into the air, Kate. Eventually some of it's going to come back and hit you in the face. I'm maintaining a delicate power structure here, one that is in your country's best interest to maintain. You know that, even if you don't want to admit it, so, I'll ask again: why are you here?"

"For Nogales--" she whispers. 

"Shut up, you're not here for that. Why?"

"For what happened in my apartment."

"Wrong."

"For Reggie."

"That was totally unrelated to me and you know it. Tell the truth, why are you here?"

"Because I didn't kill you when I had the fucking chance and I need to know I can do it. I need to know you didn't fucking ruin me."

He leans forward, his pupils so dilated they swallow up the irises. "You ruined you, Kate."

Kate jerks forward to sprawl on top of him, her teeth sinking into his jacket. He grabs her by the hair and pushes her onto the ground, stomping his foot into the middle of her back before standing and leaning his whole weight onto her. He wiggles his foot upward until it's resting on her neck. 

"You're angry, I understand. And I want to help you, Kate, I do. But you're fucking insane, and I can't help that."

She hears the sound of a gun cocking. 

"The right thing to do is to put you out of your misery, but you're too goddamn good."

He fires the gun into the dirt beside Kate's face. She screams, her ears ringing. 

"So this is what we're going to do. I'm going to keep you in here, until you're ready to be housebroken, comprende? Once that happens we'll discuss your future again, si? 

She hears the gun cock again, and then...

"¡Papá!"

A child's voice. A little girl's. Alejandro swears and Kate sees the glint of the gun as it presses against his leg, trying to hide it from the child's view.

"¿Dulcinea, que estás haciendo? ¿Dónde está tu mamá?"

"Ella fue a la tienda. ¿Jugarás conmigo, Papá?"

"En minuto, querida. Vuelve a la casa. Ahora."

"Ella venir con nos?"

"No, querida. Vuelve a la casa."

The light tripping tread retreats and soon is out of hearing range. Kate starts to cackle. 

"You lost one family so you got yourself a new one, wish it could be that easy for all of us." 

Alejandro's foot bears crushingly down upon her neck. When he speaks, there is no mercy in his voice, no condescension, no hope. 

"I'll be back tonight, and then I'm going to kill you."

The pressure lets up, and in an instant, he has left and slammed the door, locking it behind him.


End file.
